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G.O.P. Receives Obama Parody to Mixed Reviews

WASHINGTON — To the issues that divide the Republican Party, there comes one more. Some Republicans find humor in the song “Barack the Magic Negro.” Some most definitely do not.

The debate was joined last week after a candidate for party chairman from Tennessee, Chip Saltsman, distributed the parody, which was broadcast on the Rush Limbaugh radio show last year and questions President-elect Barack Obama’s racial authenticity.

Speaking to The Hill newspaper on Friday, Mr. Saltsman, a longtime Republican operative, described it as a “light-hearted” gift that would be received in “good humor” by members of the Republican National Committee.

In a party that had big losses this year among minority voters, not everyone took it that way.

“I am shocked and appalled,” Mike Duncan, the current party chairman, said in a statement released Saturday. Mr. Duncan is competing for a second term against Mr. Saltsman and four others.

“This is so inappropriate that it should disqualify any Republican National Committee candidate who would use it,” Newt Gingrich, a Republican former House speaker, said in an e-mail message. Referring to Mr. Obama, Mr. Gingrich said, “There are no grounds for demeaning him or for using racist descriptions.”

Saul Anuzis, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and another candidate for party chairman, said, “This isn’t funny, and it’s in bad taste.”

There are two black candidates for the post, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, and Michael Steele, a former lieutenant governor of Maryland. On Saturday, Mr. Blackwell dismissed the fuss as “hypersensitivity.”

“All competitors for this leadership position are fine people,” he said in an e-mail message.

The dispute illustrates a larger Republican challenge in the months ahead: how to oppose the first black president without seeming antiblack. There are no black Republicans in Congress, and a party spokesman could name only 2 blacks among the 168 members of the national committee. Katon Dawson, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, resigned from an all-white country club in preparing for his campaign to be party chairman.

The parody is sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” by a character meant to be the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights advocate and sometime political candidate. The character laments that white liberals vote for Mr. Obama while shunning his brand of more confrontational racial politics.

“Barack the Magic Negro,” the character says, “made guilty whites feel good/They’ll vote for him and not for me/Cause he’s not from the ’hood.”

The song was written by a parodist, Paul Shanklin, whose work frequently airs on Mr. Limbaugh’s show, and Mr. Limbaugh has defended it against critics who called it racist. Mr. Limbaugh said that it was inspired by an opinion column in The Los Angeles Times by a black writer, David Ehrenstein, who likened Mr. Obama to “warm and unthreatening” black figures like the actors Sidney Poitier and Morgan Freeman.

Mr. Saltsman distributed the song in a compilation of works by Mr. Shanklin, whom he described to The Hill as “a longtime friend.” Mr. Saltsman did not return phone calls on Saturday.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A19 of the National edition with the headline: Republicans Receive an Obama Parody to Mixed Reviews. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe